


Mistakes, Innocent and Not

by OnBehalfOfTheBunnies



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-01-09 06:08:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12270468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnBehalfOfTheBunnies/pseuds/OnBehalfOfTheBunnies
Summary: With multiple dimensions of Earths mistakes are easy to make, some are innocent, some are very much not.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty sure I'm going to be alternating POV's in this between the pair. It's an attempt, I feel I'm rather terrible at a male POV. So if it just isn't working after a few I'll stick with Felicity. This won't be a terribly long fic.
> 
> Unbeta'd, so thank you for any big typos or mistakes you point out.

_**Oliver.** _

The movie is cute…or as much as what passes as a romantic comedy outside of the summer hits and holiday seasons can be. _She likes them_. All my attention is on the beautiful woman who is my wife, seated inches from me. She’s engrossed with the action on the screen… _Time to play_.

“Not a sound.” My voice is barely louder than a breath, tickling against her ear. Felicity tilts her head, discreetly trying to look at me while also keeping an eye on the movie. Fingers brushing against her knee, dragging two, maybe three inches back and forth on the inside of her leg break that media spell. Not quite innocent, but not inappropriate touches. Goosebumps form under the path. I know it’s not so much the tease but the wicked promise, that I’ll move higher and just how much higher, making her breath hitch. The relaxation of her drink is gone as I do gain another inch, the silky skin along her inner thigh tensing, her legs parting further, just begging for me to slide my fingers _all_ the way up then replace them and nuzzle, taste… _play_ until risking beard burn when her legs will inevitably clamp tight around my face.

We’ll never know how far up my fingers would have made it, unfortunately, because she breathes my name, starting to whisper something about skipping the rest of the movie. I cut her off, pulling away and wrapping my hand around hers, tsking while kissing the small space just between her knuckles and her rings.

She pouts through the last half hour of the movie, squirming and finishing the fruit from her drink when the love scene happens, rather than plead to ditch again. My plans to continue inching my way up her thigh in the car are spoiled by the paparazzi trying to follow and snap pictures of us like they have since before the wedding, trying to find filler fluff for slow news days. When her hands attempt to sneak over to my lap while I drive, a short, “Honey, these pants aren’t the best for teasing, and I need to keep my attention on the road,” is the entirety of my argument. When those same hands start sliding over her own skin I wonder just what proof the boozy fruit in that sangria were, make a mental note to make and freeze some for another day, and rather than distract her with photographer worries I repeat a very interested, “Felicity, I need to keep my attention on the road.”

}]}———}>

Small presses of lips to her face, toying with her hair, feeling her body pressing into mine as we ride the elevator up, they’re all sweet, and all a ruse; I whisper to her all the _not sweet_ that is on my mind and in my plans for tonight.

Once the door to our place closes behind us I hoist her up, Felicity’s legs wrap around my waist as I kiss her downright obscenely. I steal her breath, warm her skin, make her gasp out ‘Oliver!’ while pressing her against the wall of the bedroom grinding my _interest_ against hers, pulling her tight and tighter. Only the weight of me and the press of my hands in her hair hold her still enough to kiss harder. She makes all these delicious little noises trying to writhe to get me rubbing against her exactly how she needs. I don’t though, I just tease us both, kissing her harder, until she is just beautifully unselfconscious reactions.

Breaking my mouth from hers, tightening my grip above her ears so her attempt to follow my lips fails, I bump her nose with mine, making my voice a series of commands. “Take off the makeup. Hair down. Leave the contacts in, I want you to have a clear view of everything we do. Lose the dress. When you’re done, get in the center of the bed.” When I slide her to the ground and let go she practically runs to her sink.

I smile to myself, pulling off my suit and changing into something soft and loose. The water is shutting off as I’m laying out a towel between the center and edge of the bed, perfectly in reach, full of a variety of toys and accessories I plan to use through our activities tonight.

Felicity steps out, the soft glow of the bathroom light framing her. My breath catches and blood move where it will be most useful in the coming moments. I clear my throat, smothering a smile as she eases onto the bed. “I didn’t say to take off anything under your dress.” By the bite of her lip we both remember the consequence of doing something she hadn’t told me to do the last time we played the reverse of this.

Felicity settles back, legs slightly spread, beautifully exposed in the dim light. She looks down the line of her body, then up at me again, a flush spreading across her cheeks. “I didn’t.”

“You should be sorr-“ _Wait, what? That wasn’t an apology_. “You didn’t?” She shakes her head. _Then all night she was…If she had stayed quiet in the movie…_ ”Stay still.” I lean over and kiss her softly, innocently, while my fingers slide ever so slowly from her knee up to her thigh. Up, up, slowly up. She tenses so I capture her lower lip between my teeth, lifting my hand away. The noise of protest technically doesn’t break the demand not to move, but still… Lightly smacking my fingertips between her thighs, wriggling them to tease between each strike draws out a gasped plea. Another smack of three fingers, this time harder and against the soft skin of her inner thigh, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to make it sensitive, readying for my plans. “Remember, don’t move unless I say you can.” The quiet clapping sounds mix with her increasingly louder breathing as the smooth parts of her grow pink.

I shuffle down, nibbling a path down her throat, capturing each nipple in turn and working it, alternating sharp and gentle bites and licks until they’re tight peaks. Then I lean up to whisper in her ear, “Open.” She doesn’t ask what, both lips and thighs parting for me. I have to adjust myself, indulging in a stroke or two over the fabric before planting my knees and raising her thighs over mine. Her fingers grip around handfuls of blanket as I spread her open and run my fingers through the arousal I find, thumb settling in place as two fingers tease her entrance. She’s ready, more than ready, coating me with beautiful slickness. So of course I’m going to torture us both and make her wait.

“Hold on to me,” I cage her body with mine, elbow bracing myself over her while my other hand just barely rotates, earning a breathy moan. My mouth meets hers, smiling as I feel the tense grip of her hands clutch at my back. Fingers and tongue slip past two different sets of lips at the same agonizing pace. Her muscles clench around me, as if she could force me to move faster. The kiss is begging, her wordless noises tempting me to just grab the condom and give up this game, but I promised myself I’d make this last, savoring the play of her body with mine.

Curling my fingers and feeling the tremble they cause as they find just the right spot while my thumb keeps rubbing the small bundle of nerves that has her hips twitching, I whisper, “Know what would feel better than my hand right…here?” I draw out her gasp as I increase the pressure against both.

“ _You!_ ” her voice is breathy, unhesitant, making me grin again.

My voice is lower, quieter, “Which part of me?” If she says my cock I’ll use my mouth and fingers, if she says my mouth I’ll bury every inch into her and slowly make her come apart around me.

“ _Please Oliver_ , you’ve been teasing all night!”

 _My choice then._ “If you had just left this beautiful gift of you wrapped up in that lace I would have opened you up and played you like a birthday present.” I have to tease her about the lack of underwear. Especially after that set she cruelly tempted me with this morning, just leaving those tiny bits of soft lace hanging to dry in the bathroom so I couldn’t help but stare in the mirror while shaving for work imagining how they’d hug her curves. She _knew_ I had a meeting I couldn’t miss first thing today.

I give a chaste kiss to her lips then start kissing back down her throat again, fingers plunging into the wet heat, building up to the speed she loves. I’ll make her come against my mouth, then fuck her until she does it again. Best of both options. I whisper my intentions between kisses, feeling her trying not to squirm, breathing out begging pleas at each pause. Tonguing the dip at the base of her throat, I can feel her arousal sliding down my knuckles. My mouth waters at the thought of tasting her lose control, I stretch my neck and jaw as I go, planning on taking my time to savor this. The way her body is pushing up against my hand, she’s already close. I’m aching to get inside her but I know just how long I can drag this out. A twisting scissoring my fingers inside her pulls out a gasp of my name, I capture the noise with my mouth.

It takes a second to recognize musical chiming filling the room. _You’ve got to be kidding me._


	2. Chapter 2

_**Felicity.** _

A frustrated laugh teases against my lips. His voice is low, rough around the edges, “That’s my phone.”

I dig my fingers into those gorgeous exposed shoulders of his, encouraging him to _stay on task_ exactly where he is. “Work…,” a soft pleading kiss before he can pull away, “or telemarketers… _Ignore it_ , we’re in the middle of something more important, _Husband_.” I use the title to my unfair advantage, and it is a glowing success. After the briefest hesitations he kisses me again as the chimes continue, his hand picking back up doing delightful things with small focused motions.

I’m moaning, writhing, as his mouth resumes teasing its way down from my clavicle, on a journey that he breathes in midnight toned promises against my skin. When my phone joins the chorus, Oliver’s head tilts, looks up to my face, then over at the dual ringing. “Your phone-“

The use of his lips and tongue to state the obvious instead of continuing is _not_ appreciated. A shake of my head denying it, hips arching up, encouraging, reaching and pressing on his wrist, grinding those fingers to reach _juuust_ right. My breath hitches, “ _Work, s-spam, ign…ore!_ ”

He curses under his breath, while those damn phones continue repeating their demands. I say his name the same way he just swore, seeing the tensing as he debates staying here instead of answering the rings. “I know, just let me check…I promise I’ll make it up to you.” His fingers ease from my body, hand from my grip, pushing up to his knees and giving me a teasing view of those soft sleep pants tented out with the evidence he is just as into _this_ as I am.

Oliver’s expression is full of arousal and apology, even as my fingers try to replace his. I frown, letting him see the disappointment, and feel my other fingertips through the small collections of items on the hand towel near my side, not wanting to lose the progress. By the time he’s standing I’ve nudged aside the condoms, massage oil/lube combo, buzzy stretchy cock ring, and palmed the toy I sought.

He taps his phone, his fingers may be on the screen, but his eyes follow me. Oliver’s mouth opens but no sound comes out. Fully knowing this goes against the ' _he's in charge_ ' premise of everything tonight in the attempt to hopefully repeat the delightful results of date night what feels like an eternity ago when it was my turn to lead, I give him a wink then let my eyes flutter shut as I press the small button and let it hum against me. Granted we have a great spontaneity, our chemistry needs no encouragement, but with how busy we’ve both been these occasionally scheduled date nights have been a welcome addition.

"Oliver? Oliver are you there?!"

_Oh...the ex. Goodbye mood for everyone_. Unsurprisingly his focus shifts. With a mental sigh I turn off the vibrations. Letting the toy fall back down to its resting place I extend my one clean hand and he distractedly passes over my phone. A glance at the screen then I'm clearing my throat then quipping with false cheer, "Hey Team Two. 'Sup in Central?" at whoever is calling from the STAR Labs line.

"Felicity!" _Hello Iris_ , "Cisco was browsing through the… _what do you call it?..._ “ The question is not directed at me, “-multiverse spectrum and says he got a big hit that Ol- well you and Oliver need to get to this one." _Straight to the point, thank you ma’am_.

A faint voice carries over the line, obviously further away from the phone, "As soon as possible...now...like _yesterday_."

She translates that to me as, "He says it's urgent you both get here."

I look over to where Oliver is pacing, his features tight, his voice getting increasingly strained and quieter as he tries to get more details from Samantha with concise questions. Concern is growing, gnawing at the peace of the night, "Now's not... I don’t think it'll be a good time for him."

"It's got something to do with his son, something to save our version of William with... I don’t know what to call it… _Cisco I am NOT calling it that!_...something from that-"

I bump it to speakerphone and raise my voice to get his attention across the room, "Oliver! Conference call, now. Betting both calls are related." He takes the steps closer while I place my phone on the bed and dash to our closets while listening to what’s being said. I grab a couple sets of clothes for both of us along with a pair of dampened washcloths. Taking care of my clean up and dressing while the details are shared, I keep moving, scooping up the entire towel of things and shoving it in the nightstand…well everything but the toy, that gets dropped in the bathroom sink for cleanup later.

Samantha and William will be at the lab before we are obviously, but hopefully the crew can do _something_ to help while we're flooring it there.

}]}———}>

Minutes later we are in the elevator, headed down to the parking level his car is in.

“I’m sorry.”

My jaw drops, but he’s watching the numbers tick down, not looking at me. “Oliver Queen, don’t you dare! William takes priority and we both know it.” I raise our joined hands up between us, “However, Husband,” I trace my tongue against the skin between his first and second fingers, “you do owe me.” I can taste the nearly washed away hint of myself, not my favorite flavor but that’s not the point because ever since our wedding he’s seemed damn near addicted to it. If I wasn’t so close I’d have missed the faint tensing, the silently sucked in breath as his eyes meet mine in the mirrored panels. Once those doors open we will be all business but I’m not passing up the last chance I might have to lighten his mood and draw away his focus before whatever is going to go down happens.

He dips his head down, kissing me hard, desperate for that fast comfort of touch; it’s instinctive but entirely necessary, and the tightness of the embrace he wraps me in lets me know just how much he needs it.

}]}———}>

He’s already pressed the fob to unlock it, but as we approach the car he hesitates half a step, "The motorcycle might be faster?"

I really don't want to spend the trip with the promise of the night rumbling between my legs...”We’re already here,” I pat the messenger bag at my side, packed with a laptop, tablet, and the handful of useful equipment we keep hidden away at our place, all nestled in safely with the extra clothes, “besides, in the car I can use the satellites to avoid traffic, and I can look up the schematics as Iris compiles them from what Cisco sees.”

We make it outside the city in record speed. It turns out blueprints are not needed, not really, we’ll be breaking in to their version of Queen Consolidated.

}]}———}>

A horn blares and something presses against my shoulder to keep me back as the car shifts, startling me awake with a jerk as the acceleration continues and the car steadies. “Sorry! Sorry. Was a bit tight through there.” His arm retreats back to his side of the car.

I apologize, even if it’s a tangle of noises instead of actual words. My groggy mind suspects that I might have misunderstood just how spiked the ‘spiked fruit’ was earlier tonight because those wedges of watermelon, pineapple, and peaches betrayed my plans to be useful, having lulled me into the warm haze of an accidental nap. At least he did stick with the car so I was buckled in, rather than falling off. “Want me to drive?”

My question was perfectly reasonable, but earns a very fast, if polite, comment that I should try to catch another nap for the last twenty miles.


	3. Chapter 3

**_Oliver_ **

Felicity had grabbed dark clothes for us, so we don’t have to waste time changing again, just a couple seconds to add some gear. I pull the dark gray jacket from the trunk on our way in and shove it into her hands as we walk.

She puts it on without questioning. Without questioning is _not_ the same as without complaint. “Are you kidding me? This weighs like 30 pounds!” _It doesn’t._ The Kevlar lining it is heavy, but necessary for her. “How am I going to run with this dragging me down? Hmm…At least it’s warm…tons of pockets…” Felicity stays with Team Flash looking at what they have on exactly what we need to bring back.

It feels like my heart stops when I see William lying there in a fitful sleep, tubes and machines attached to him, his skin a waxy pale except the bright flush at his cheeks and lips. Samantha looks up, tear tracks in her makeup and desperate worry on her face from the opposite side of the bed while Caitlyn pushes something into his arm. I take his hand, it’s cold, clammy, there is no hint of the, of _my_ happy child I had seen a month ago.

“This thing, this prototype will fix him?” I don’t hide the desperation in my voice when his eyes don’t even flutter.

“We’re still trying to stabilize-“ She looks at Samantha and me, stopping herself, “Cisco said he saw the device that can pull whatever this toxin is out of William’s blood before it does any more damage.”

}]}———}>

There is something about this other Earth, not the fact that it feels grittier, darker, dirtier even just looking through the portal…Cisco says it’s the essence of it, feeling almost slimy apparently, that has him staying here, holding a fist sized opening between the dimensions so we don’t get trapped. _That’s not a thought I wanted to add to my worries._ Barry promised to stay with William, if something…if something goes wrong he can run him to a hospital or somewhere safe faster than anything else. I try to convince Felicity to stay here, that I can do it on my own but Cisco insists he saw her getting in where I couldn’t., combining that with the look she gives me, repeating his words back, and I know I’m not winning this one. We get one final warning that there are still meta’s in this one, but they’re different than our Earth, “S _o be careful_!” I hold her hand, squeezing tight and getting a squeeze in response, a deep breath, and we’re through.

}]}———}>

Queen Consolidated isn’t’ the only thing still up and running, as we break in to the building still under the cover of night I see someone that brings me to a standstill.

“ _Oliver_ ,” Felicity hisses at me, “ _Oliver! We have to move!_ ”

“ _I…I know, it’s just…_ ” My hand tightens around hers. I know. She knows. No more words are needed, but that temptation just to say an ‘I love you’ one last time to my mother… _Focus. Your son needs you!_ We slip through the entrance as one.

}]}———}>

It’s almost too easy.

Felicity moves us through sealed doors and identity verifications with comments that it is going to take a while. Each time it is only seconds later access is granted. Even I’ll admit it would be taking way too long to get here without her, and speed is of the essence.

She points in the direction, with the shelf number and I’m off. Her voice is quiet, “This is like a freaking candy store…and my willpower is practically nonexistent right this minute. I just need…this. And this…and oh my god this!” I smile despite the situation, not complaining as she shoves small pieces of who knows what into the many pockets she now has. I am just slipping the device inside my coat when her “Oh Fudgcicles! Unwanted company!” carries across the room followed by the doors being forced open. Apparently we’re not the only ones tonight with the intent to steal. A half dozen people in balaclavas and night vision goggles move as one through two sets of doors.

These idiots don’t know what hits them. I’m on the first two within seconds, taking them down with brute force and surprise. The third is a useful shield to halt the fire of his partners as I fling him across the room.

There is shouting, gunfire, then an odd burning smell. Felicity’s voice yells out “O-“ catching her near-mistake and correcting it in the same breath, “Arrow!” I whip around, trying to find where she’s moved to. Her eyes are wide, and I try to make sure she’s not in anyone’s line of fire, shooting an arrow through the hand of someone stupid enough to aim a gun at her. She throws something…a respirator, at me, yelling “Battery fire!”

I beat on a pair that try to overpower me, they obviously haven’t worked together before, getting in each other’s way. Grabbing the device from where it landed, I yank it on, seeing her point towards the exit as she shoves her own on. I nod. _Good. She’ll be safe._

The alarm system starts blaring, emergency lights kicking on, helpfully blinding anyone wearing night vision. Maybe thirty second pass before something, likely the batteries, explodes, throwing shelves and their contents flying. I look to where she was, then the path to the flung open door…I abandon the fight, launching myself at the exit.

“Felicity?!” She’s not here but she has to be here. It was a clear ‘ _I’m getting to safety_ ,’ signaling, leaving me enough time to finish up and make my own way out. Despite that I’m still standing in this doorway, alone. I try calling, of course forgetting our phones don’t work here, something she explained in fast words about the network. _Where is she?_

Tire tracks drag across the ground, thick marks showing at least one vehicle sped off in a hurry. I feel the device, still safe inside my coat, looking around for any sign of a vehicle to use. _Damn it!_


	4. Chapter 4

**_Felicity_ **

Everything is a sort of blur of chaos. The alarms kick in and I try to get my thieving butt out of there. Some shiny piece of advanced tech I ache to take apart and figure out falls from where I couldn’t quite fit it in a pocket and crunches under my shoe during my sprint towards the door. I’m flung forward as the battery bank explodes. Someone yanks on my arm, pulling me out through billowing smoke, the restricted view making me realize too late, right around the point I’m thrown into the back of a van, that it’s not someone I want to be going with. My mask is ripped off, and a bright light is glaring in my face long enough for inverted glow to replace it behind my closed lids. The shouting in a language I don’t recognize, and whatever they pull over my head, plus the thrashing and yelling weight that is thrown on top of me just reinforces that conclusion. I punch at where I think they are, and am rewarded with a sharp pain as my fist connects with the teeth of whoever is leaning over me. They are not happy. A sharp pain sends my forehead into the floor and the world goes black.

}]}———}>

It’s a dark cell. Small, as ancient as you can get in Star…Starling City, and low tech. My head throbs an angry heartbeat, slowly forming a thought. _Tech…Tech!_ I feel at my clothes and am left wanting.

_Damn…damn…oh come on, not even…?_ Every pocket is empty. Pants. Jacket. Super-secret-at-the-cuffs-of-the-jacket tiny pocket with a lock pick set Oliver said he’d teach me how to use when pushing it into my hands. Everything but my clothes and rings are gone. My knuckles are swollen, throbbing and I assume jammed, not broken, so it’s likely the only way they could have got them off is by cutting the bands or taking my finger. _Thankfully neither happened….Yet. What the-? Don’t think ‘yet’ think of how to get out of this!_

A scream has me freezing in place. Muffled but definitely feminine, definitely in pain or fear as she begs words I can’t quite make out, then is suddenly cut off. _This is a bad place to be._ My mind repeats that while I feel around, trying to figure out if there is an exit. Half a minute, maybe the crying comes back with loud coughing. I strip off the jacket, wrapping it around one of the thick metal poles lining this place. I pull as hard as I can, even bracing my feet on the sides and pulling with all my weight, but it doesn’t do any good. I hurry, trying each bar, each joint I can wrap my jacket around. As the minutes and the noises pass, nothing weakens, nothing moves.

There is a sound, which my mind says is a firecracker but I know can’t be is followed by more screaming which cuts off just as abruptly as before. _Get out! You have to get out!_ I kick at the corners, feel along the floor, wedge a leg through the bars and try to climb up, to feel, to try to find any way of escape. The feeling of desperation claws its way into an unhelpful panic.

A light clicks on, blinding compared to the lack. I drop to the ground, keeping my back to the bars as my eyes try to adjust. Metal bumps metal, the scrape of the cell door is opened and someone is thrown into it. The person doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything just makes wet gasping whimpers.

One of the masked men prowls towards me. Using every ounce of strength and the moves Oliver and John showed me I flip them hard and try to dart out of the cage. As I pass by the bars someone, hidden in the remaining shadows, grabs me by the hair, yanking me back until their arms wrap around my shoulders. They say something that makes the one on the floor laugh and hop up. The cold metal of a set of cuffs clicks around my wrists. My fighting is of no use, I was coached in the skillful art of ‘take down your attacker and run like hell,’ not this.

}]}———}>

I’m yanked through a hallway into a small room full of ominous looking people and things. Before I can get my bearings there is a click and glaringly bright lights are directed at my face, I have to close my eyes to keep from being blinded. The chair I was shoved into as the door slammed shut is hard and, unsurprisingly, uncomfortable. A voice, speaking in bad and broken English, comes from in front of me “You will tell where is wanted or both die.”

It’s been a couple hours, maybe, since I was thrown into the van. Less than half an hour in the drive, and the rest in the cell, but not for the first time my mind screams, _Oliver where are you?_ ” I don’t know anything! I’m not from around-” A blow, by the sound and feel of it a slap, strikes my face and the chair wobbles. “I don’t know what you want!”

“Where is the-“ I can’t understand the word they say.

I respond with the truth, “I don’t know what that is.”

There is something I don’t understand said back and forth in multiple voices. “The…Well…Fountain. From TV. Where has hidden it?”

“I _don’t know_ what that is!”

One of the light clicks off and I can see someone, masked, leaning forward towards me, holding a revolver and a single bullet, “Other say same. Add pain take air, suddenly remember wrong.” He shoves it into the chamber and spin the cylinder. “You, we start air.”

“No, I’m not from here, I don’t know what that is or what you’re-“ I’m pushed backwards, shoulders hitting something solid before I’m splashing into what I both fear and hope is water. For a couple seconds I am motionless with the shock of it. Then with trying to conserve that half breath of air I have left, but as a hand holds my forehead down the panic takes over. The pressure to gasp for air is growing. I know I can’t get up unless they let me go, off balance and backwards with no way to get my hands free when they’re trapped between my body and the chair, I can’t force this person to bring me up. The comments from Oliver and John ring in my head, either thrash and flail around, let them think you’re breaking and they’ll keep at it, or stay calm, don’t give them what they want and they might try something else. _Might_.

My eyes close and I try to fall into the meditative mindset that apparently everyone on the team can do easily but me. It doesn’t work, but they do yank me back up right before I start flailing. The gun is pointed at my knee. “Where hide?”

I’m still gasping for air. A table comes into focus in front of me, all the little things that had been secreted away in my pockets are lined up, so is my phone, and Cisco’s tech. _Oh crap._ ”I don’t-“ Another cough to try and clear out more water, “know what y…you’re talking about!”

He pulls the trigger and I jerk back reflexively. No bullet, no wound. He spins the chamber again, grabs my chin, yelling in my face, “Where!”

“I don’t-!” A shove and I’m tipping backwards again, hitting the water with a splash as I gasp in a deep breath.

It repeats. I am pulled out seconds after I inhaled half a lungful of water, the gun is aimed low in my abdomen.

No bullet in that chamber, another spin of chance, demanding an answer I don’t have, followed by a slap and another dunking.

Again. He steps around to my side, I feel the gun press to my left pinkie and hear the click. I tell him the truth, I don’t know where what he’s looking for is. I plead, I cry, I run out of options. My other hand is spared too but I know the odds, even with the spins, that bullet is going to shoot sooner or later.

They stop dunking me when I try to breathe in the water, hoping to pass out and cut this short. The one with the gun says something, and another wipes the sprawl of wet hair off my face, pulling it back and tugging. The voice is quieter this time, “Where? We stop, tell where.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” He circles around, raising his arm, I can feel the tip of the gun press against the base of my skull. “I don’t know! I don’t know, I don’t know, please!” I’m trembling so hard the chair makes small screeching squeaks as metal drags on concrete. I’m not sure what I scream, but it’s not the answer they’re looking for. _Click_. I’m gasping, unable to say anything, just shaking my head.

“Tell u-” A commotion starts outside, sounds of people yelling, fighting. One of them covers my mouth to get a better listen of what’s happening then sends some of them go running out of the room.

_Oliver! It has to be Oliver!_ The hand still clamped tight over my mouth muffles my attempts to scream. Gunfire makes the distinct echoes mixing with more yelling. The gunfire stops. I stare at the door, waiting for him to come charging in. A minute passes. Two. Then one of them leaves the room.

It takes seconds for him to come running back, frantic in his motions and angry sounding words.

_Oliver?_

The man with the gun doesn’t spin the chamber, eyes growing dark. Furious is an understatement. He points it at my face, pauses while nodding at the man behind me. My mouth is free and the whisper comes out of its own accord, “What happened?”

He raises a brow, asking without asking the same question I still don’t have the answer to.

I shake my head, feeling the hot paths of tears, “ _I don’t know._ ” _He’s going to shoot me. He’s going to shoot me in the face._

_Click._ He pauses again, no spin. “ _I DON’T KNOW. PLEASE I DON’T KNOW!_ ”

_Click._

Another pause. _Three of six. I’m going to die. They won’t know it’s me._ “ _Please!_ ”

_Click._

His hand doesn’t waiver, staring me straight in the eyes.

A gunshot rings through the room, but the pain isn’t there. Before I can even scream the thought trips across my mind. _I feel normal, not dying, or what dying by gunshot to the brain should fell like, right?_


	5. Chapter 5

**_Oliver_ **

I’m torn. William needs every minute for the STAR Labs team to make this work for him, but I also need to find Felicity from wherever, get her back from whoever took her. _Damn it all!_ Since I have no idea where she is, and doing the other will have to provide me with that information, the decision is made for me.

I’ve never moved so fast in my life as when running, stealing the closest thing with an engine and wheels, and getting myself back to our Earth. Shouting at Cisco while approaching the small portal, I dive through as it grows, yelling at him to keep it open.

Shoving the device at whoever was closest  I demand they help my son, then back to the man looking uncertain as to why I demanded he keep the portal open. “Use your thing, your other meta thing, find her.”

His eyes go wide, looking around, just noticing that Felicity isn’t with me. “She’s not-? But…” He looks at the mercurial gateway, “Oliver, man, I can’t do both at once, and if I-“

My words are a growl. “You will.” Normally I’d be thankful that he’s scared enough of me to follow orders even if uncertain of the results, this time I’m too worried. _I should have made her stay here. She’s been missing for too long already…_

The portal shrinks down to barely the size of a fist as he fumbles the shiny glasses that help out of a pocket. Seconds later, “Everything’s choppy, foggy…I can’t-I’m not sure what’s past, present, or future… It’s all dark and-“ He cuts himself off with a whisper, “Ohhhhh shhi-.”

My body tenses, waiting for whatever bad news he’s going to say. “Cisco?”

“Wait…”

_Wait? You don’t tell me to wait after saying that, you start talking!_ “Is she hurt?”

“…I need to get an address, a look outside, something…Ow, hey, stop! It’s already hard enough to do both without you crushing my shoulder!”

I didn’t realize my hand had moved to him, so I pull it back, squeezing a tight fist, trying to be patient for a couple more seconds. When those pass

“It’s a building…tall ceilings…Hard to see...Oh! That’s you! Very distinctive glare…”

“Details.”

“Outside…A warehouse. I know that building…” The edges of the opening waver.

“Cisco focus, keep that open!”

He focuses on that portal fully, letting the glasses slip down while looking over at me, “It’s a couple blocks over from what is the STAR Labs storage facility on our Earth. Off Oak Street.”

“Is she hurt?”

“I don’t know. Maybe- Maybe not yet? There was a gun, screaming…it was too fast, too fragmented, I told you I can’t do both at the same time.”

“Then be ready for us to come in fast. Fix William, and be ready.”

}]}———}>

The building is not hard to find. It takes too long simply because of distance, but it’s the only one with people around. And there _are_ lots of people. At least three pairs lazily circling the building, possibly more. The lights are on at the ground level near the loading bay, but the narrow alley makes it a tight fit to stay out of sight. I keep my mask on, the dark clothes helping me blend into these shadows just as well as at Queen Consolidated. I move fast, the first patrol taken care of before I hear the faint echo of words  being screamed. Moving on instinct, through the bay, a punch, kick, or throw as needed to clear my way. There are shouts, and I hear the gunfire before I see the weapons. They don’t know how to follow a moving target like me, jumping, twisting, and kicking off the hallway wall to dive . Cisco had said he saw guns and I don’t have time for the skilled solution right now. I take one of their weapons and fire back, ending that fight before it starts. They’ll live, they might not use a limb or two without fast medical attention, but they will live.

There are two guarded doors just around corners, on opposite ends of the hall. I go for the one with more, if she’s not there it will mean fewer on backup. They may be on alert, but they are no match. In the same motion as yanking open the door, I drag the unconscious bodies into the room with me…it’s dark just like Cisco said. Letting them drop to the floor a click lights my flashlight and I sweep the beam from corner to corner. No one else in here to take down, no sign of…

On the floor, near the bars, I know that jacket. I know that person curled into a limp ball wearing it. There’s a small pool of blood, but leading to it is a stained smear, like she dragged herself over to that spot. My hands clench in order to keep from shaking as I say her name, sprinting. A couple bullets open the cage-like cell and I’m kneeling, clearing her face. _She’s breathing._ My fingers hunt fast and carefully, finding the source of the blood and using my belt to wrap tight around it until it’s as good as it will get. Scooping her carefully, I fly through my mental map. While I would love to beat every one of the people here until I feel the tiniest bit better I have to get her home.

She doesn’t move, doesn’t complain, doesn’t make a noise as I carry her, not when I’m breaking every speed limit and rule of the road to get her back home, to help, faster.

}]}———}>

“Felicity, come on honey, wake up…why isn’t she awake yet?”

Caitlin pushes me back as she moves around the gurney, “You’ve been here 90 seconds, let me check and  get her stabilized!”

“She’s cold!”

She gives me an exasperated look, “Oliver- Look…go tell Barry her blood type so he can ‘shop’ a couple pints at the blood bank. Then go, just go, check on William or something, but get out of here.”

I try to squeeze her hand but am bumped another step back, “But-“

“This is not the first time she’s been shot, you’ve been shot, you know she’ll be fine with or without you making my work more difficult!”

Something’s wrong and I can feel it in my gut but can’t put it into thought. Or can’t put it into concrete thoughts, other than the fact that the brilliant, fearless, wife of mine is a magnet for billionaires, accidental innuendo, and trouble in the form of everything from ‘bad guys’ to kitchen fires. _I shouldn’t have let her go with me!_

}]}———}>

Another half hour passes.

William is getting better, seemingly by the minute – the coughing is gone, he’s breathing doesn’t have that rattling squeak, his fingertips and lips have lost their blue, and that’s after only three uses of the device, letting it charge and giving his body a chance to recuperate between each.

 Now I sit, stroking Felicity’s hair, over and over as I fight falling in and out of sleep. The bullet had gone through, grazing, but not shattering bone, no major arteries hit. She’ll be able to use crutches or ‘preferably’ a wheelchair for a couple days, but I know how well that idea will go over. Maybe if they keep her on this painkiller drip she’ll be a bit more open to the idea.

Her forehead creases, eyebrows furrowing together as she makes a noise of protest. Then her eyes pop open with a raspy “No!”

“Hey, you’re safe, you’re safe now!” My hand covers hers and she looks down at it, her fingers trying to pull away slightly, then back at my face.

“Oh wow…Your eyes are blue…really blue.” It is then that I remember that while the mask is long removed, the dark circles painted around my eyes would still be there.

“I was- we were worried about you.” I shout out for Caitlin to get in here.

She shakes her head slightly, flinching a little at the motion, “My Mom is not going to believe this.” She says it while looking around with wide eyes.

“I think Donna would sleep easier _not_ knowing the details on this one.”  I pull rub at the makeup that has started itching with the intensity that she’s staring at it.

“How do you know my mo-ohmygod!” She gasps in a loud breath, “You’re Oliver Queen! I mean, of course, that makes sense, it’s so obvious, who else could afford all those toys- things, all those things you use to…” Her eyes leave mine, darting around the room, as she pales, “Please don’t kill me, I won’t tell anyone! I work for your Mom’s company, so really I’m helping you- And I knew some of those things you use looked familiar! You’re using the R&D to-“ She covers her mouth, staring at my hand like it’s dangerous.

I try to process the barrage of words that just came flying out at me in the past fifteen seconds, “Felicity? …Honey?”

Her blocking muffles, but not greatly, the start of the next rush, “I won’t tell anyone, not even my Mom. I’m saying ‘mom’ a lot, you…don’t…need to do anything to my Mom-, or me-, or…” She darts her hands out, as I stand there stunned at the suggestions leaving her mouth. The sheet gets tugged up, covering her face, “Just…just let me go and I’ll forget the last minute ever happened. I swear!”

My heart feels like it’s frozen in my chest, “Sweetheart...how hard did your head get hit?”

Caitlin and Cisco are already walking towards us. There is a click, interrupting Felicity’s stammering as Caitlin tugs down the sheet, “Please follow the light with your eyes, don’t move your head, just eyes.” Felicity does. “Good. Now, full name and today’s date.” Again she gives correct answers. Felicity is rigid, like she’s afraid of something, of me. I try to reassure her, gently running my thumb over her knuckles. _That’s not right…_ I had assumed whoever took her had taken the rings along with anything else of value since every pocket was empty, but there’s not even the smoothed indent where they normally rest.

_No._ Scanning over her from top to bottom… _No, that jacket is custom, the Kevlar lining was put in not more than a week ago. Her hair is wet, that would make it look longer and darker…right? It’s not different? The pants, black, just like she put on…_ It’s suddenly hard to breathe. _Those aren’t her shoes, she wouldn’t wear shoes like that on a- Felicity- Oh god!_  

My words are clipped, “This isn’t her.” I’m standing, already trying to form a plan. “This is not Felicity, not my- our Felicity. Cisco?” There is a rising panic in my voice, I know she’d hear it, probably no one else would recognize just how bad it is in order to be heard though.

Cisco grabs his glasses, shoving them on his face “Already on it, Boss.”

I close my eyes and drag fingers against my scalp trying to refocus on what's important. "Felicity's jacket- my Felicity's jacket. How did you get it?"

"I was cold!" She insists defensively.

"I don’t care why you're wearing it," _Yes I do_ , "where did you get it? At Queen Consolidated? In that cell? Somewhere else?"

"When I woke up, I passed out after…It was in the cell, I saw it when they turned on the light to make sure I was still alive…When he was asking questions to find out where the Fountain of Youth machine had gone he kept saying something about my sister. They were crazy, I don’t have a sister, but if your Felicity looks like me…maybe?”

The ugly bruises on her face, dark marks that shouldn’t be there… _She’s been there for hours!_ "Cisco, I need you to do both again."

“You…” I trail off, not sure what to say to this other Felicity, “You stay here, they’ll make sure you’re ok.” Decision made I step towards Cisco waiting for him to open a gateway.

“Wait…Did…did you just kidnap, I mean abduct because I’m obviously not a…Did you abduct me from my abductors?” She sounds confused, and scared, and that is driving wedges of pain into my mind, imagining just how confused and scared my wife is…She’ll think… “You can’t keep me here, wherever here is…I don’t want to be in it. Please, just let me go and I _promise_ , cross my heart and hope to…cross my heart I pinkie promise I won’t tell anyone you’re The Hood.”

“I’m not going to- I’m not _The Hood_ , I’m _The Green Arrow_. You just need to stay here, be safe, and we’ll work out how to get you back later.”

Cisco mumbles something about not finding it, but doesn’t stop.

She is working herself into a panic, “Oh my god I’m being kidnapped twice in one day. I’m going to die. My Mom will think I was trafficked and oh my god don’t traffic me! I’m going to die here and no one is going to feed my puppy and he’s going to-” Whatever the differences in our Earths at least the stream of babble is familiar.

Cisco moves closer, “Hey, I just need to…” He touches her elbow, “Yep. That helps…” A portal starts blinking and stretching into existence. His voice is strained, “This place really doesn’t like being visited.”

She yanks her arm away from him, backing up further on the bed, with a yelp of pain as the leg moves, “Please! I swear I won’t tell anyone! Just let me go and I’ll-“

Caitlin and Cisco ask as one for her to stop moving, “Oliver, I’m losing it!” The portal wavers.

I hold his hand over her harm, pressing tight, ”Look…just…just be quiet! I’ll take you back and drop you off at a hospital.”

“Hey, hold it just like that, let me touch both of you, it should help get it…” The circle gets wider, just inches from me, and I stretch forward to reach the side of myself through.

It’s the old place under Verdant? A familiar sound, fingers racing over a keyboard, I look over and I see her just as she looks up, her eyes go wide and she takes steps that increase into running towards me, “Hurry!”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd ~~not even my usual reread and touch-up.~~
> 
> *Edit - got a chance to glance - saw a couple grammar and minor wording things to change, nothing big

**_Felicity_**

The scream that wrenches from me cuts short when another sound of gunfire, from above and not from the man in front of me, sends my captor dropping to the ground to join his weapon.

Before I can look up a third shot sounds and the man who had come running back in falls just as quickly. The room is silent except the frantic words freaking out in my head. I look up, trying to see… _Please be Oliver, please be Oliver_ …and manage to spot the masked and hooded form in blacks and grays. In a gracefully effortless move he rappels down some sort of line hooked to the beams and unused lighting structures in the lofted ceiling, landing while keeping his gun trained on the door.

When no one else comes charging back in, he takes the steps closer. I’m still breathing too hard, too high on terrorized nerves to talk without screaming again so I stay wordless, letting him make the motion at my back that has the cuffs releasing.

“You ok?” He asks in a steely disguised voice. Lurching up, out of the chair, I flail as blood surges down to my feet, tipping off balance in my rush to have us leave. He grabs me just as fast as I grab onto him. My hands find his arm and chest, the feel of him giving a sense of safeness that nothing else could. “We need to move. Are you ok enough to walk?” I just clutch tighter over his heart. He waits a beat, but when I don’t answer one gloved hand clasps over it and starts pulling me towards the door.

_Wait!_ _The other-_ “Wait!” I gasp, while remembering why we shouldn’t be out the door in the next two seconds. His gun is aimed at where I’m looking before his body is finished turning. It takes him no time to see nothing is there and his grip is tight on me again. Finding my voice I blurt out, “No, not-“ my feet drag to slow him down until he lifts me up, “There was someone else, in the cell with me, they were hurt!”

Oliver makes a low noise of frustration, it’s obvious he wants to be out of here just as much as I do, “Where?”

“Down the hall,” I point in the direction I think they moved me, “not far.”

He sets me back down on my feet, “Stay here, be quiet, I’ll be right back.” Oliver’s already slipping out the door before I can say anything else.

}]}———}>

Carefully keeping my eyes on the table, and not the weapon or the unmoving people on the floor _that I am carefully trying not to think of_ , I get a better look at the things that had been shoved into then taken out the pockets I still had back at the start of this adventure.

_Are any of them broken?_ I don’t really know what they are supposed to be like other than temptations for someone like me…One deep breath, then I’m shoving as many as I can fit into the small pouch beside them that holds my tablet. It only takes a couple handfuls before it gapes open, seams threatening to break as I manage to wedge all but the last device in. _I can’t just leave it here for any other goons who show up._ I’m debating on somehow working it into my back pocket when Oliver sprints back in. “Can you fit this in your-“

He talks over me, “They called in backup, we’ve gotta go.” Oliver eyes the device I’m holding in his direction, “That from Queen Consolidated?” I lift the pouch full of the rest, before I get a chance to answer he grabs the bag and the last piece out of my hands, shoves them in some new pack thing he has strapped to his shoulders, blending in perfectly to his jacket.

“What about the person-?”

“Looks like they weren’t that hurt. They escaped, couple of guys unconscious, cell wide open. Move!” He grabs my wrist and pulls me after him gun pointed in front, ready.

He leads the way, tugging me along as he checks each new opening and corner. We break out through an emergency exit without running into any…any conscious people, the cool night air sends goose bumps prickling up my arms, making me shiver. Before my eyes get a chance to adjust from the building to the moon and faint streetlights Oliver’s pushing me up the fire escape steps. “ _Up!_ _Move_ ,” he hisses, “ _quietly_.”

Climbing is slow when trying to be silent. Up past the mid-level landing, since the ground floor had such high ceilings, rounding the next when voices echo up to us. Oliver curses and in one motion spins me around, pinning me against the wall with his body, my arms trapped in front of me as he covers my mouth. “ _Shh!_ ” His body is tense, head, resting near mine as we listen. More voices carry from different directions, too many, even for him, to take on quickly…not when who knows how much additional backup is on the way.

The hand on his gun doesn’t move, but the glove over my lips slides away, “ _Not a sound_.” His hard breaths tickle against my hair, the press of him holding me still while heat radiates into me…this feels _intimate_. The fact that it’s the same words in the same tone he used at the movie… I suck a breath in through my teeth. “ _Shh._ ”

An intense awareness of just what he _could_ do clenches through me. _Why is one sound getting me so worked up?_ It must be the adrenaline moving, or the closeness, or the forever _in_ a day since we were so abruptly interrupted. _Priorities! Don’t think about-_

A beam of light breaks apart no more than two feet above my head, a line of shadow where the bar blocks it before its jumpy path skips over to the windows. The voices carry through the air from below. He presses harder against my back, as if his sheer will is going to hide us both, and damned if my hips don’t instinctively rock back into his pelvis. He startles, then his lips hover next to my ear, breathing words almost too hushed to understand, “ _Not really the time._ ”

I respond in the same near-silence, “ _You just saved my life, and after everything tonight you’re all up-…my head says ‘not the time,’ but the rest of me isn’t exactly listening._ ”

I can see a smirk ghost across his lips when his head dips slightly. “ _That how you work?_ ” Oliver’s unarmed hand slides a path over my shirt, making me fight the urge to push into both forwards and back. Before I can come up with the retort that deserves he crushes me forward. The rough leather glove cups over a breast, dragging the fabric across my skin. A circle of light skims the building a few yards beside us then glows a lazy path along the wall as voices come into reach and one yells back towards someone that he’s checking.

Squirming as the flashlight moves away, my mind tries to make common sense arguments. _They are still down there, still talking._ _Doesn’t matter. Don’t care, as long as he keeps doing that._ Oliver’s thumbs over my nipple, not stopping, and pinching over the other so hard I hiss. Another “ _Shh!_ ” but his fingers don’t stop, sneaking under my shirt the buffer of the glove making it toying rather than aching, as his hips… _Oh you teasing son of a bitch!_

Ignoring why we’re here, what we should be doing once the coast is clear, the very fact that people with guns are a few body lengths away, _needing_ more I push myself into the small motion his body makes. _Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks I’ve not seen enough of my husband since our last date_.

A minute passes, his fingers getting bolder, motions getting more demanding until both hips and hand suddenly go still. I don’t, and the chill of the air invades my heated skin as he leans slightly away. Only then do I recognize the sounds of echoing footsteps moving away. _Oliver I love you but if you are going to ramp us up like this, then hop right back to STAR Labs without taking the five more minutes…husband_ _we will be having words explicitly defining 'work time' appropriate behavior_.

Another few tense second pass as the alley is grows quiet, and argumentative yelling comes from around the side of the building. When everything is quiet he does something to the gun that makes us both freeze. The metal dragging on metal noise couldn’t possibly be as loud as it seems. When no one comes running, no cry of alert sounds, his arm moves under my shoulder and with a faint click and whirr a wire is launching to the opposite roof, a hundred feet up and away from us.

“ _Ready?_ ” I nod, closing my eyes and mouth tight, because if I watch I’m going to not going to be quiet.  He squeezes me tight to him, then we’re launching up, being dragged through the air. No sooner do our feet touch the edge, than the voices come back. At least one extra pair of complaints comes with them. We scrabble forwards, he more than half carries me, out of sight, into the pitch black shadow of the giant HVAC units.

I lace my fingers with his, squeezing tight, he gives one squeeze in return, then nudges, pinning me forward against the sheet metal. “ _Wh-?_ ”

“ _Shh!_ ” He nips my earlobe, hands grasping my hips.

“ _We don’t have time!_ ”

“ _We_ _need to wait for them to move to the other sides of the building, the roofline is visible from the street. Thought you wanted to play?_ ” His chest leans into my back again, a foot knocking lightly between mine until I inch my legs wider. After a quick adjustment he is letting me feel _him_ grind against the curve of my ass and the small of my back. The rough scruff of his chin brushes against my neck, followed by a kiss as his fingers grip the fabric at my waist. Hooking on, hovering a second until I rock back again needing his touch directly on me, a slow drag coaxes my clothes half down my thighs. I’m cold and exposed, burning up under him. He drags his hand up the back of my thigh and grabs a handful of flesh, squeezing it possessively.

My breath hitches. Ignoring any hint at modesty, and our date’s rule of letting him have control of tonight, I demand, “ _Hurry up!_ ”

A noise suspiciously close to a laugh reaches my ears as gloved fingers move to trace me, tease my entrance then slick their way up, circling. I gasp and his hand is on my mouth before I can form any words. “ _Shh,_ ” Such a soft whisper as his hips work against my ass, “ _not a sound._ ” I nod, he pushes a fingertip of his glove between my teeth, “ _Bite this_.” I do and he tugs his hand out, pushing the leather more securely into my mouth with another demand to bite.

My teeth press down, and without anymore toying his hand moves, fumbling between us. There is the faint crinkle of foil and the plasticky smoothing of latex. _This is something I swore I’d never do...I need it…and we’re both consenting adults… and…Mmm!_ He lifts my hips, pulling me back so the length of his erection can glide between my thighs, teeth scrape my shoulder, and fingers tightening their grip when my arousal easily slicks along the path. _I need this, need him._

Pushing through my folds, he is breathing fast. My fingers clench and flex. I _need_ to touch him, _need_ him in my grasp. My hand slides back into the hood, even as he tries pulling back, firmly grabbing a fist of his hair, my nails scraping his scalp

The noise he makes as I lightly tug the rough handful is hushed and low, and has me clenching inside, wanting. He tilts me oh so slightly and in a fierce thrust is buried. The fraction of a millimeter of latex helping smooth the stretching of just-shy-of-ready. I ache at the pressure, the fullness, the leather in my mouth the only thing that stifles my moan. He stays there a few seconds, letting my muscles clench and relax, adjusting to him. Then no more time is wasted, when he starts moving, it’s with the same desperation I’m feeling.

He grabs my wrist with enough pressure that I have to drop my grip. In one fluid move he’s got it down out of his hair then in front of his face for a second then is sucking the fingers into his mouth, licking and toying with my fingertips before dragging them back across his lips. He spits on them and I flinch away, more at the noise than the unfamiliar act. Before I can protest he pushes them down, cupping his hand over mine against my front, rubbing our fingers against delicate nerves in time with his thrusts

It’s faster, rougher, and other than the muffled wet sounds of our bodies joining, quieter than we’ve done this before, and damn if it isn’t working for me. It’s only a minute or so before he comes first, biting into my shoulder to muffle his groan, sending it rumbling into my skin. I try to pull away when it feels like he’s going to break the skin, with a whispered “ _Hurts!_ ”

He shudders and leans hard against me, bite slowly easing off. “ _Let me apologize._ ” A motion and he pulls out, still half hard, two fingers taking his place. Not reaching in as deep…feeling…curling… _Fuck!_ My whole body tenses as he bumps against that wonderful little sensitive area. My fingers shake as I work over my clit in desperate motions. He thrusts his hand hard, stretching the two fingers apart while still managing to hit against and around that spot again. “ _Come on…_ ” He doesn’t ease up, doesn’t bother with the normal gentle rhythm that will get me there, keeping up the rough pace. A tiny part of my brain tries to warn me this will leaving me aching in payment for the cresting pleasure, it gets ignored along with the rest of my common sense. Heat whips through me, my body going rigid as bliss takes over all rational thought. I scream into the glove as his hand clamps down over mine, keeping the motions over my body in pace with the ones inside me…It is too much. Too little air and too much clenching, pulsing, heart pounding bliss to focus on breathing. So as the instants seem to drag out and intensify through my mind and trembling body, the edges of the world go dark. Then everything does.

}]}———}>

I come to, still pinned to the HVAC unit, my clothes awkwardly pulled back into place. He whispers “ _Shh…_ ” at my faint groan, “ _Welcome back._ ”

My legs threaten to give out and I breath out a whimper. “ _That was…intense._ ”

“ _Give me your number and I’d be happy to repeat this another night._ ”

_Very funny._

There is a noise and quick as a flash he is away from me, yanking someone around the corner, and with shadow hidden blows that I can hear more than see, proceeds to beat the pulp out of them.

“ _Enough!_ ” I gasp as the figure goes limp. He pulls out a gun and I grab his arm to stop him without a second thought, “ _Stop! Stop he’s-_ Stop!”

I get scoffed at, and Oliver detracts me from him, aims with some comment, and I practically dive to grab his hand, dragging it away again. His eyes narrow on my grip, “Where did you get that?”

“What?”

Any hint of smug joviality disappears, “That ring, where did you get it?”

“Oliver?”

This gets the gun aimed at me, “What did you just call-?” Quiet violence fills his tone, “What’s your game?”

“Are you crazy? Stop!” For the second time tonight I have a gun pointed at my face, “You! You gave it to me! Oliver, stop-“

My hand rests over his heart for less than a second before he shoves it away, “ _I_ gave _you_ my mo- that ring?”

All the little signs I shrugged off flit through my thoughts, and I can feel the blood draining from my face. _No. You’re being crazy. He must have a concussion or something. That could- that would- No. No. No._ I step closer, not thinking, just needing to shove my hand under his shirt as metal kisses my skin, feeling up the small of his back and up. He doesn’t shoot me but he does tear himself away. “Oliver!” He has his scars, they are familiar, I know them, have spent long nights massaging them as we- I can feel them, but…but that one just above the patch of burn was unfamiliar, a bullet?  _Oh my god he's not my Oliver!_

“Quit calling me that! I don’t know you and you sure as hell don’t know me. I am The Hood!” He jerks his arm, fires the gun without looking, I cover my scream as a body in the shadows falls to the ground. “Unless you want to join him you will give me back that ring and start explaining right fucking now! Were you in on the theft tonight?”

_It’s just a symbol. He doesn’t believe me. This is all a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mistake…_ “This- This is mine. Your mom is…you can call her, ask her if she still has her ring on her finger…unless Walter-“

“Quit talking about those people!”

“I promise you Oliver, this was not stolen. It’s mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be Felicity again, realized I didn't put some stuff in the last chapter of Oliver's so now I need to work it into what I have for the next part.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taking too long to get this one out, so next chapter will be Felcity as well so I can push these six-ish pages up now.
> 
> Unbeta'd. Happy Halloween. Thank you for reading, comments, and kudos!

**_Felicity_ **

There is a crackle of radio chatter from one of the two he just shot, it draws not-Oliver’s focus for a fraction of a second before he demands the ring again.

“I can’t!” Holding my hand splayed at him so he can see the swollen joints of the middle and ring fingers that barely flex as the others wiggle, as the last few minutes proved, fine for general hand movements, but nothing fine tuned, “Even if it was yours, which it isn’t, it’s not coming off until-“

The radio blasts again and he snarls a curse at me, yanking something long and dark out of a pocket. “Turn around.” My eyes go achingly wide as they move from his face to the hand still holding the gun. The smallest motion shakes my head from side to side, distinct from my shivering, and his eyes narrow at me, “I’m not going to shoot you in the back. Now turn around.”

Momma Smoak didn’t raise an idiot, so I take a step back, darting looks around the far edge of the roofline in the faint streaks of predawn brightness. My insides twinge in protest as I tense. It is instantaneous but feels like longer as I mentally prepare myself to make a break for any option of escape that isn’t back towards the people who took me and isn’t a straight suicide plunge. _Is that another building or is it just a sign? I need to get down and away, then back to-_

His gun fires, and my arms fly to cover my face, like that would be fast enough or tough enough to stop a bullet. The sound of a third body hitting the rooftop behind me fills my ears.

Oliver takes steps towards me, and I shuffle back, not wanting to look at, nor trip over whoever is dead or dying behind me, “I’m not a threat, I won’t talk to anyone. I just need to get back home, just need to get back to my Earth, and you’ll never hear from me again.”  My voice would embarrass the confident and successful me “Oliver! Please, don’t-“ hard suspicion ices his eyes at his name.

_Move now! Move! You wont’ get another chance!_ I dart to the side, slower than I’d like, but it’s as fast as my body is able to move. I get three steps before an arm reaches out and spins me around, fabric wraps over my eyes and around my head. “Don’t, I-!”

He yanks the blindfold so tight my eyes water, knotting as I try to twist and duck away in the escape moves he taught me. My Oliver must have been going easy on me because they don’t work against this other him. _Yet another thing we will have to talk about when I get home. I’m getting home. I’m-_ A second band of fabric yanks my arms together behind my back, shoulders aching from being in this position for so long earlier tonight.

“Scream and I _will_ drop you.”

“Drop? _What_?” That same metal on metal drag cuts through the air and he grabs me around the waist, “No! You said-“ _NO! NO! NONONO!_

“I said I wouldn’t shoot you,” the last word barely reaches me before we are wrenched through the air again. Instead of up, it’s over and a dramatic, terrifying, plummet downward.

_NOOOOOOOOOO!_

}]}———}>

I’m still shaking. My heart is never going to leave my throat.

Hurtling through the air towards the ground, whilst blindfolded and with the very real possibility that one of the people who won’t hesitate to shoot us will see that suicidal plunge is not a performance I _ever_ want to repeat.

Even the solid leather seat of whatever car not-my-Oliver practically threw me into, thankfully crashing the seatbelt into its buckle on the way,  isn’t quite enough to convince my mind that we’re not going to go flying back through the air at any second, especially with how he’s driving. I’m more than a little freaking out as he makes aggressive turns and floors the gas, speeding towards who knows where.

_This is not where I want to be. I need to go, to try and get back…I need to get back to Oliver- my Oliver, my extended team, my Earth, my life. Tonight’s been a…night. I traveled to another dimension. I broke, entered, and stole. Was captured, tortured…rescued. I had sex with my not-husband. I am going to have to explain to my husband that I…_

His voice is angry “Who are you.”

“F-“ _Don’t give him your real name!_ “Overwatch.”

There is a scoffing sound, “’ _Overwatch,_ ’ your mom call you that?”

“I- It- It doesn’t matter.” I try to get out of this painfully awkward bound and buckled position to no avail.

“Then you can start explaining who you are and why you think you know things about me.” He shifts gears and makes a turn that has my shoulder pressing against the door.

“ _You_ wouldn’t believe me.”

“I believe you’re a stalker. One of the groupies obviously, but how did you know they’d be breaking into that building. Or were you in on everything?”

Turning my face to the driver’s side, the frustrated question is out before I can keep it a thought. “How stupid do you think I am?”

“Stupid enough to steal from me.” I gasp for him to slow down as the car feels like it wobbles as it swerves. He just accelerates harder. “Stupid enough to think I’m your boyfriend-“

“Husband!”

“What?”

“ _My-Oliver_ is _my husband_ , not a boyfriend! It’s an easy mistake when you are-”

His biting laugh is full of anything but humor, “I guarantee you I am not your ‘ _husband_ ’”

“No. _You’re absolutely not_. God, you just– Is this what you would have been like without John and my help? Is that all it took? Staying alone after Lian Yu?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I might be one of the few who could hear the lie in his voice, but it’s right there, blaring at me.

“You have the scars asshole! You can lie all you want but I know every-“ _Not my-Oliver, he had that extra one and who knows what else_ , “ _almost_ every one of the marks on your body! That burn at the base of your spine, that happened on Lian Yu. The tattoos are from Shado, John, and the Bratva.” My words rush forward with things no ‘stalker’ could know. “You still have nightmares. You hide it from everyone, but your years on that island, when Waller was exploiting you, the Bratva, then the Undertaking, the League of Assassins, all of it still wakes you up at night. Not as bad as it used to be… You hate swimming. You love super thick socks because of those years where your feet were freezing all the time. You blame yourself for your father shooting himse-“

He hits the brakes so hard I jerk forward with a startled cry, and slam back against the headrest as the seatbelt catches. “ENOUGH! Stop talking if you don’t want me to-”

Not letting him finish the threat it pours out of me in a single breath “I’m-not-from-this-Earth! On my Earth, my dimension, Oliver Queen is my husband, and a hero, not just…just whatever it is you are here.

The car is silent other than the idling engine and our breathing. A musical chime and it shuts off. Still not saying a word I hear him get out, slamming the door, a couple seconds later the cold rush of air hits my skin as he yanks mine open.

Faint shouting noises sound like they echo off a building somewhere nearby _. Frack! No! He took me back?!_ It’s too late to apologize for the words. Which would be better, to plead my case, or to shut up like he wanted? My seatbelt clicks, the straps loosening, and I lean towards the center of the car, away from him, shaking my head. _Don’t. Oliver, don’t-don’t-don’t-don’t-_

“Please, just let me go home!” I’m grabbed, pulled, hoisted, and carried. _He wouldn’t really leave me with them…They’d kill me. He wouldn’t…he might…_ “ _Please?_ ”

There’s a set of beeps and no response.

}]}———}>

Another silence and a jostled carry later I’m shoved down into a chair. It slowly spins around with the momentum of his action. I keep turning my head at the small noises, trying to get any clues as to where I am. 

There is clicking and typing from a few feet away, a drawer being yanked open and shoved closed, more typing… _His focus is somewhere else_. Stretching a foot to feel along the ground in front of me when I can’t feel him standing nearby, I test, and the chair inches forwards a small nudge. _Go. Just go. Move. Anywhere is better than being a sitting duck, right?_ I do it again, and again, nearly silently scooting.

“Don’t.” He pulls off the makeshift blindfold and I blink. My eyes adjust from the blackness to the sparse lighting, and I recognize I’m not back in the building with the cell. _This…this is the original hideout under Verdant_? _Ok. He’s not going to kill me. He’s going to…_

Another few clicks and footage of me disabling cameras at Queen Consolidated play. He must have hidden a camera on an independent system, sneaky. “Why were you there?” He says it with such a voice that it’s obvious he knows what was taken.

Hesitantly I don’t lie, but I try not to tell all of the truth, “We needed one of the prototypes to save Wil- someone important.”

“I thought you were from another _dimension_.” Oliver rolls his eyes, “Why not use the one from QC there?”

“We don’t have one, and Cisco vibed us needing this one.”

“He _what_?”

“He vibed uuuuuh-“ That doesn’t sound right. “You don’t know him here or he doesn’t…? You have metahumans here, right? Cisco said he saw meta…he works kinda like a psyc-“ _Cisco would not like me describing him as a clairvoyant,_ “a medium of time and dimensions. He had a premonition that we needed this device from this exact Earth. In your company.”

He mutters something under his breath, it sounds vaguely about how I must be an even crazier stalker than he thought. “Just how big a crew are you working with on this heist?”

“Oh, Cisco’s on Team Flash, not our _crew_. More like a…a partner team. So he doesn’t really count. Of course there’s the Original Team Arrow – you and Jo- Spartan and me. Then there’s the ones who have moved to other things, White Canary, or was she…no Laurel had- Oh, and Arsenal! Then there’s the rest of the current team, Wild Dog, Mr. Terrific, Black Canary…the third Black Canary…And you can count the ones who help when needed like Th- Speedy, and Nyssa, Vixen, and John Constantine, and the Legends, but Ray and Sara were on- The ATOM and White Canary were on our team first so they count as like…graduates, plus Quinton, but he doesn’t suit up so- I’m talking too much, you don’t need to know all that. We’re a… a large family of friends…that changes…as needed.”

“They were the ones holding the gun to you? Or the ones paying for Queen Consolidated tech?”

“No. No one was paying for- We needed it to save Wi- Someone important!”

He pushes the bitemark on my shoulder the chair leans back, “Who’s Will?”

“Your-” That bound and off balance feeling overrides common sense for a single word before I catch myself, “Don’t know what you’re talking about.” _Does this Oliver even have a child with Samantha?_

“You keep trying to stop yourself from saying ‘Will,’ who is he?”

“He’s- he’s y-“ _It wouldn’t be fair for me to hoist this on this-Samantha and this-William if he doesn’t already know._ The chair protests at being forced into this angle, and even not submerged in water I can feel my chest growing tight, “William is my son.” _Technically_ stepson, but the four of us got together, had a rational discussion, and came to the consensus that it would be ok if I simply referred to him as my son, so I’m not actually lying.

He eyes my lower half, the chair righting itself as he lets go. I’ve never wanted to be out from under his intense stare so much as in this moment.

“I’m not hiding him down there, thanks.”

“So how were those things you took going to help him?”

“Just the one Oliver had, the rest…” Own up, “I was stealing the rest to find out what they could do and how they worked. For me. I was curious. It was a mistake.”

His glower is severe, “I don’t believe anything you’re saying.”

My hands try to clench behind my back. _If he leaves the room I can slide down, get my arms under my legs, and get out of here._ “Just let me go home! You can stay here where you have your mom, and your sister, and-“

Oliver’s jaw tightens “My sister is dead.”

I suck in a breath, silent as I fight the instinct, the clawing itch, to comfort this other version of the man I love as the pain radiates from his frame. _Don’t ask. Don’t’ press for details. He’s not my Oliver, I’m a stranger to him, I couldn’t help him- he wouldn’t let me hug him even if I was unbound and offered._ “Not on my Earth. On mine Moira is the one who died.” _Did this-Slade kill Thea instead? He’s not yours, stop thinking like he is._

“My mother is very much alive.”

“I know. My Oliver…he would have very much liked to have a few minutes with her.”

He kicks the base of my chair and it wobbles while rolling me back a body length. “You stay away from her!”

“I want nothing to do with Moira Queen.” I won’t speak ill of the dead, especially not one who my husband loved, loves, but I won’t exactly mask the way I feel about her from showing in my expression.

He takes offense, and the hurt evaporates back into pissed off and suspicious, “My mother is a good person, she is-“

“Your mom is a pathological liar! What she hid from you, from your-“ _Nope, not saying those things!_ “You and my husband may love her, but Moira Queen is _no_ saint!”

He circles around the chair in a wide loop, “Like you are? You break into my company, you steal from me, you lie about where you’re from, you make up some ridiculous story to try and justify to throwing yourself at me, but I sure as hell don’t know you and as soon as I figure out how I’m going to keep you quiet I’ll drop you off to throw yourself at the next-”

I launch to my feet, I may not be able to slap him but I’m not going to just sit here and let him call me a whore. “Fuck you!”

The son of a bitch just smirks, grabbing hold of my aching shoulder again and pushes me back down into the seat, “ _Yes you did_.”

His utter smugness, the casualness like it happens every day, flits a thought into focus, and the words are out just as fast, “Are you clean?”

Clearly not a question he was expecting. “What?”

“Are you _clean_. I thought you were my husband, I don’t have to worry about-, are you clean or are you a hotbed of things the condom might not have protected me from?”

He crosses his arms, sizing me up and waiting a painfully long time to say, “I’m clean.”

I stare wide eyed and unblinking at his face.

“What are you doing?”

I blink hard to make sure my contacts are clear before looking from the corners of his eyes, across to check his features. No flaring of his nose, no stress around his lips, and the small area just below his ear that twitches when he stretches the truth stays still, “Seeing if you’re lying.”

“I’m not lying.”

“I’m making sure of that, I know your tells.” Everything indicates truth, and the tension in my chest eases a bit.

His masking smile is devoid of warmth, “I’m not your husband.”

Looking around the room pointedly I respond with the same cold tone, shifting my shoulders forward to emphasize my still restrained state, “That is very obvious _now.”_

“But not while I was fingering you so good you squ-?”

“It was a mistake!” I try to push away, but the chair doesn’t move. We both know he’s stronger than me, so I’m stuck until he lets go. All I’m left with is glaring. “You know this you is a real jackass! There’s no way you could measure up to my husband.” I stare him up and down and try to show just how lacking I find him, “When he comes back for me-“

“No one’s coming back for you, the only place you’re going is a mental institution.”

_Think. You’re smarter than this, think of a plan!_ “Look, I can prove it, just let me at your computer and I’ll pull up the portal. I’ll even talk through what I’m doing in little words you can understand. Then when you see I’m telling the truth, you let me go, I’ll hop back to my Earth and you can return to being miserable all by yourself!”

One eyebrow raises, ignoring my attempt at smack talk, “You think you can prove you’re from another dimension?”

“All I have to do is find the right security camera and show you the portal, that’s a cakewalk.”

Everything about him shows how little he believes I could do anything of the sort. A minute passes, two, then with a noise like I’m wasting his time he cuts through the fabric pinning my arms behind my back. “Go ahead princess. Let’s see you try.”

With my balance returned I hold the handles of the chair and slide myself over to the computer. A moment trying to stretch out the jammed fingers of my left hand, but they still are swollen and hard to use. _Screw it, hunt and peck with that side._ A quick assessment of the things he already has is rather dismal, but it’s not like I have a choice. An agonizingly slow drag of typing, “Right, so we came out in the alley between the library and the bus stop off of…there…there… aannnnd…your connection is so slow! Are you on dial up or something? This is redicu- Yeah, there. Bank camera, security camera, and traffic cam.” I pull up the three windows, getting just the edge of the alley in all three, but positioning them to get the best ‘overall’ view.

“How are you doing that?”

It’s my turn to roll my eyes, “I’ve done it before, it’s just remembering the tricky parts, so this time it’s faster.”

“So where’s this ‘ _magical_ ’ gateway?”

My fingers keep tapping the keyboard, skipping backwards through each feed. The traffic cam only stored a few minutes so I’m down to two videos. Even so it’s talking _forever_. Or more than a minute which feels like forever. I skip back to the start of the evening and jump forward by hour, looking for the portal to open. “Don’t you make air quotes and sarcasm at me. If you think I don’t see you still struggling to try and practice your magic when you assume I’m not paying attention- or I guess this you wouldn’t have done that…probably didn’t have Dhark to worry about with-“ My attention focuses back in on the struggling equipment, “Oh come on! You’ve got to be…” _Forward, back, forward, bit more, bit more, too far, nudge back, and voila._ _There!_ I play the couple seconds of dark video, “There – that’s me, and my-Oliver, and there’s our _magical gateway_.” _Take that you smug jerk_. “Let’s get back at that QC feed, and you’ll see…” I pull up a few more windows showing the QC building right before we broke in and I cut the recordings, “See, there’s your mom leaving, and there’s…” Something in another window catch’s my eye, “That’s me? Not me-me, the here me, the–“ I see the look on his face, “Oh shut up!”

“I didn’t say-“

“I know what you’re thinking! It’s just a coincidence…it makes sense, I used to work there, so this-me stayed. Company files…her phone number, lets’ just call…” I motion at the pocket he keeps his phone in until he pulls it out and dials. There’s no answer. “Let’s just ping where it is…” It takes me seconds to get into the phone company data, “The last signal was about a mile from QC earlier tonight?”

A sinking feeling invades my stomach. “Let me see that bag of stuff…” I’m rummaging around at the back of his removed jacket, finding a phone other than mine, turning it on. The light at the camera glows, as does a small circle, I put my thumb to the circle and let the sensor read my face. The thumbprint fails.

_He came back for me. They took us both. It was her in the cell._

I press my index finger on the sensor and try again. This time it works. “The…the people near the cell…were they shot with arrows?”

“No.”

“Were they fatal wounds?”

“No.”

_He came back for me…and took her…_

I move back to the feed of the ally, going frame by frame, hope sinking. I see a car speed up to the entrance and park, the lights staying on as the driver doesn’t waste time turning it off. _That car isn’t there now…could just be..._ Oliver is clear to me even with his disguise on, carrying a familiar blonde figure over to the glowing oval, moving through before it closes. _Of course Cisco wouldn’t keep the portal open…I…He…_ The computer crashes, resources beyond their capacity. The spell of it broken, thoughts free to follow every bad rabbit trail of possibilities. I lurch to my feet, grimacing at the physical reminder of the mistake I made. The mistake I made while my husband was rushing the not-me back to our Earth. _My way home is gone. I’m stuck here._

Oliver catches my elbow before I can move away, and I try to shove him off, “I need to go to the bathroom.” My voice is tight, this night, now day, too much to deal with right this second. He holds on for another second then lets go.

I’m already moving across the room when his “It’s over-“ starts.               

My composure is gone at the thoughts in my head, so when I cut him off it’s with a voice that voice that quickly gets higher, rough and just on the edge of a screech turning into a scream, “ _I know where it is!_ ”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd as always. Thank you for reading, kudos, and comments (and pointing out any glaring mistakes/typos I missed!).

**_Felicity_ **

In the small room I pace. Talking out the facts. The possibilities. The situation. A glance in the mirror shows the faint remains of makeup that didn’t wash away in my repeated near-drownings. _You’re stronger than this. Smarter than this. Think of a way to fix this!_

Not a plan, but a set list of ideas lines up in my mind, a hazy bulleted list to follow. I fling open the door only to nearly bowl over not-Oliver who is standing right outside. “Done crying in the bathroom?”

My eyes narrow and I storm back to the computer. I wasn’t crying. There’s nothing wrong with crying, it’s a natural thing, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit around wasting time crying when I can be taking the steps needed to get back to my Earth.

This-Oliver just watches me move, looking a bit confused until I pull the case off the not-yet-restarted computer. "You can't just-"

"Can and am. Whatcha gonna do? Said you wouldn’t shoot me.”  _Said he wouldn’t shoot me in the back, and then said he wouldn’t shoot me, that’s twice. Twice means he thought about it. Considered it._ I don’t show fear even though part of me is terrified of this angry person who is not my husband, mostly because I don’t want to imagine my life where he is the only version of Oliver I have.

This system is terrible. I knew it was terrible, I fixed it on my-Earth, but that was years ago, this…this is worse, like he downgraded. It’s ancient, a dinosaur of a computer, “You’re still rich here, W. T. F. dude?” Not waiting for an answer I see what I have to work with… _Maybe if I use my tablet as a base I can make this a quasi-usable system. In the meantime I just need to buck up and resort to every possible string of hope_.

“I’ve been busy saving the people of Starling City every night.”

“Don’t say it like you’re the only person in this room who does that. My city may have changed names, but I help my-Oliver, both in his role as Mayor and in his role as hero. Now, can you back up? You’re encroaching on the too-close-to-me zone.”

“I’m still not fully convinced you’re not a criminal…Wait, I’m Mayor?”

I just make a few more adjustments and fire up the still-crappy-but-a-lot-less-crappy computer. “No, you’re an asshole looking for fights. My-Oliver Queen is the Mayor of Star City.”

While it’s loading I check off another mental box, swiping his phone again and calling this-Cisco. That results in the fun of getting yelled at for being a crank call when I ask if he can locate fluctuations in the dimensional fabrics and residual energy trail, and open a path back to their origin. He doesn’t hang up until I ask if he can vibe.

When I redial and ask to speak to Barry he doesn’t know who I’m talking about. “Barry. Come on, Barry, you know… _fast_ Barry…wait-“ A search shows that STAR Labs did explode, but there is no Flash on this Earth. “Let me…let me speak to Doctor Wells!” I get hung up on and blocked. I bounce the phone signal, because thankfully those resources are the same here, to hide any information about who is calling and try again, but the line just rings.

Ray is on some sort of “Zen seeking chakra cleansing” spiritual retreat according to his secretary.

Curtis is impossible to find. _Would be easy if this wasn’t such a terrible system!_

ARGUS is still run by Waller, not Lyla, so I get threatened and thank my precaution for not having agents storming the place with weapons drawn.

Next attempt…Apparently my “You call him right now, Mister!” doesn’t faze this-Oliver.

“Tell me how you know John Constantine again?”

“You called him! You brought him to help restore Sara’s soul after they brought her baaaahh- damn it!” _I do not want a repeat of Thea and Sara, no matter how much I love those two badasses._ “Just call him!“

He doesn’t believe me, not when I tell him about his past, things he hadn’t told anyone else about the island… It doesn’t work. This Oliver’s been working alone too long, he’s too cut off from any connection with his emotions to be swayed by me.  

When he makes a snarky disparaging remark I whip around to face him, finger pointing, “It’s not going to work.”

He looks unfazed, mostly bored, “What?”

“I know you.”

“And I _know_ you.”

Ignoring the innuendo I snarl, “This asshole act isn’t fooling me anymore. You may not be my Oliver, but you’re hurting the way he did at the start of all this, you need…” _Don’t say me. I’m going home!_ “A team. You can’t do this alone!”

“I work best alone.”

We both glare at each other.  I flick him off and he grabs his crotch, exaggerating a movement with his hips, then walking across the room while quipping, “Feel free babe. You may be crazy, but-“

“Don’t finish that sentence.”

}]}———}>

I’m typing furiously, trying to force systems designed for the normal and everyday to work in locating the fantastic and mythical when something flares a glow in the corner of my vision. _Cisco?_

I look up and over, barely willing to believe it when I see a hand reaching through, then the start of a face…our eyes meet and I can see the raging concern in his as I start towards him, his voice tight, “Hurry!”

“Oliver!” I’m almost there, my hand reaches out as I can see the edges of the portal starting to disintegrate, shrinking back down to half its size. My head and arm are practically diving through and I’m trying not to imagine some horror movie bisection possibility when something wraps around my other arm, going taut and yanking me almost completely back across the barrier as I gasp, “No!”

My husband’s fingers circle my wrist and attempt to keep pulling me through the gateway, the wire on my other is constant pressure, the even pull straining my arms painfully as a yank on one moves my head to one side of the portal and a yank on the other moves it back across. Cisco’s voice carries as start to cross back into my world again, the strain in it is not helping, “Hurry guys! The connection is fighting me!”

The wire is replaced by a set of hands, dragging me back, “No! It’s- This is my-“ He can’t hear me through the portal, I lean my head back as he inches me back through even as my legs try to brace and push me home, “No! This is _my_ -“

We’re both wrenched through as someone must be helping my Oliver to pull us back across the portal. The extra weight sends me stumbling into my husband’s arm, balance off and threatening to tumble us. Not-Oliver has his gun aiming, the tip moving as he takes in the lab, my friends, settling directly in front of me, on my husband as I recognize the nearly identical me in a hospital bed next to him, Barry, and Cisco.

“Barry!”

The arm held by my not-husband is free before I can blink.

The dimensional portal winks out, as the sound of small pieces of metal and plastic start as they clatter to the floor, leaving just our reality in the room as Cisco hesitantly stammers out, “Well…Thi-this-this..is..something…”

}]}———}>

**_Oliver_ **

“Oliver!” She reaches for me and I back up so she can come across. I swear at Cisco as the portal suddenly shrinks. She gasps out “N-!” as her momentum is reversed and I barely have time to grab her wrist, pulling hard to bring her back to me. Whatever has her pulls harder and so do I, apologizing on repeat before her head starts to cross back through.

“Hurry guys! The connection is fighting me!”

She shakes her head, eyes wide in fear, “No! It’s- This is my-“ She is pulled back through before she can finish the words.

I’ll be damned if I give up without a hell of a lot more fight than this. I’ve trained for years, no one and nothing is going to simply pull her away from me like this. I yell wordlessly while straining to bring her back through. Cisco shouts out something but I can’t focus on it, an electric blur rushes over to me, adding in to my strength, pulling with the power of the speed force and then my wife is crashing into me. Additional weight nearly knocks us over.

I don’t know what was trying to keep her there, but as the portal collapses and the weapon catches the light I do the thing I hate without hesitation, I ask for help. “Barry!” My arm tightens around Felicity as the blur moves from helping me to disassembling the gun and pushing the other person off of her.

Cisco’s voice is loud in the near silence “Well…Thi-this- this..is..something…”

I move the hair out of my wife’s face, needing to see, needing to know, even with the threat in the room I can trust the kid to handle it but I need to hear her, “Are you-“

“I’m ok. I’m ok,” Her arms wrap around me, fingers digging in tight enough to bruise, but I’m not complaining to know she’s alive after the things I’ve imagined over the past few hours, “I’m fine, I’m ok, I thought- Oh my god Oliver I’m-“ She kisses me like she thought she’d never kiss me again. I respond no less desperately. Drinking in the taste, feel, and her glorious state of being alive, I take her at her word, though part of my mind is already planning on getting Caitlin to check just how ok she is, especially if the other-Felicity was in the condition she was.

My voice comes from across the room, startling us apart, “What the fuck is this?”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short but I'm getting back into this and my other current work, thank you for your patience, and for reading.  
> Unbeta'd as all my things always are.

**Oliver.**

Without a conscious effort I’ve moved in front of Felicity, both Felicities, making myself a human shield when I get my first good look at the person who was on the other side of the portal, coming face to face with a reflection of myself. _What the fuck is right._

A gentle hand settles in a familiar spot, a touch that so often has wordlessly said ‘ _I’m here,’ ‘You’re not alone,’ ‘We’ll be fine._ ’ Today it just serves to fuel the need to keep my family safe. The portal is closed so I can’t have _escort_ his journey from our Earth back to his own. My words are icy and savage in their accusation, “Why were you trying to keep her _there_?”

My doppelganger’s hand touches a holster, and I flick a glance at Barry who moves again in his lightening rush. Before Barry finishes saying “Oh, right!” more dismantled weapon parts and a couple knives form a messy ring just out of this other-me’s reach.

A scoff, like he’s offended by the idea and unimpressed with all of us, “I wasn’t trying to keep anyone.” _I couldn’t possibly ever have been that self-important..._ The teasing voice of my wife whispers ‘ _haughty_ ’ in my memories of late night conversations.

He tips his chin at my shoulder where I feel Felicity’s body resist my attempt to keep her out of sight. “Guess that’s the ‘ _husband_ ’ and not someone trying to abduct you again? Oh, and look, he brought back the other one. Guess I’m not the only me into threesomes-”

Halfway through his barbed words, as my fist clenches and the bottom of my self control not to move is scraped, Felicity’s fingers hook onto my elbow and dig in tight. I cut him off with an icy promise of pain, “Don’t talk about her- _my wife_ like that.” If my weapons weren’t all the way across the room, away from this equipment he’d have a warning shot in an arm or leg, something I’ve still favored after all these years.

The alternate version of Felicity makes an exaggerated gagging noise from where she’s laying, “Twincest is gross, not a fantasy!”

My Felicity tugs, trying to get me to look down at her, but I don’t, something about her is saying clearly that she’s not ‘fine’ and the fact that she hasn’t tried to put herself between us points a neon sign of responsibility at him, “Wait! Oliver! Please, please- He saved my life, please just wait!”

An angry noise rumbles deep in my chest up to the back of my throat, but I do as she asks, my fingers graze hers and I don’t move while meeting her wide eyes. _I could have lost you._

Her hand settles into mine, squeezing with a slight hesitation, “I’ve seen and read enough sci-fi to be wary of potential…Barry, when you crossed dimensions, did you touch yourself?”

The kid gestures anywhere but at himself. “I…could you maybe rephrase-“           

Her brow scrunches in confusion before it sinks in, “Oh! Oh not _touch yourself_. Like, _touch your_ …I mean the other you, from there, _did you touch him_ …” Barry’ mouth opens as he just shakes his head again at her phrasing. “I mean we’ve had Black Siren and you know, _the others_ , but I can’t remember if…they never had their ‘other’ them within reach, right? You guys deal with dimension hopping more than our crew, so, if the _here you_ and the _other you_ touch, does it create a-“

Her doppelganger pipes up from the bed, joining in on the train of thought, “-Dimensional displacement that would cause a paradox that could cause one or both of the duplicates to blink out of existence.”

My hand is lifted and motioned with as they share _this- is-an-obvious-concern_ posturing, “We’ve obviously read the same-“ My Felicity gives a nervous laugh, gesturing back and forth, “Because that was nearly word for word what I was going to finish saying.”

Barry and Cisco look back and forth between them, “Um, no, we didn’t ever…but Wells did. There was no blinking, no paradoxes.”

Felicity’s, my-Felicity’s, eyes dart away from mine, and before I realize what she intends, she reaches out, nudging the other woman’s hand with a finger before she can flinch away.

_Oh. My. God. Felicity! What are you thinking!?_ Heart in my throat, I just stare for a second at my wife, at my not-wife, then my wife again before the rest of me moves, pulling her further away from the bed and giving her a very unhappy glower. Quietly, through gritted teeth I manage to force out the words, “That is not something _you_ test.”

Her voice makes it clear she thinks she was being reasonable, “It was fine for them and would be either us or y-“

The not-me has stealthed closer, the others might not notice until he speaks but I sure as hell do. His voice is full of things, _insinuations_ , it should not be when speaking about either of her, “Don’t listen to him, feel free to keep ‘ _touching yourself,_ ’ maybe record it, for future-”

Her hands tighten on me, and I see her glare with the ferocity I’m feeling. There is something, a panic or hurt, in her sharp hiss that has me on edge, “ _Will you shut up!_ ”

“You wouldn’t be the first set of twins willing to do anything for a shot at the Queen family fortu- “

This time I move before she can stop me, stealing my fist away from her to make a satisfyingly aching contact with his jaw in such a way he goes sprawling to the ground. Even if he’s out cold I snarl, “I said don’t talk about my wife-“

Before I can finish Felicity pulls on my elbow, tugging me back and away, her hand snaking over my heart as she pleads, “Send him back, Cisco.”

“There might be a… _slight_ delay on that.”

 “What?” The three of us who are still conscious demand just slightly out of unison.

It’s like a bad echo.


	10. Chapter 10

**Felicity.**

I can sense what his move will be before other-him gets a handful of barbed words out, it’s too late as one well placed motion takes down the not-him. My Oliver is so focused on the posturing and words that I doubt he caught the fast, furtive glances around the room. The search for the familiar disguised as a leer. He may never have studied his own nervous tics in the mirror, but I have been devout in my observations of the man who is my husband and they’re glaringly obvious to me now that I’m no longer in a state of panic, now that I’m home. _He was scared. He was looking for control of the situation, even if the only way to do that is by being an obnoxious dick and pissing everyone off._

Desperately I grab my-Oliver’s arm. _I need to talk with him. I need to be alone and talk with him now!_ “Send him back, Cisco.”

Cisco taps his goggles and I can hear the strain in his voice, “There might be a… _slight_ delay on that.”

We all demand _that_ be clarified, different emotions in each of our voices.

A nearly silent furious noise escapes Oliver, the anger still radiates from him between precisely controlled breaths, but he doesn’t move. He knows I am fully aware by now of his need to do _something_ , even if it’s as stupid as punching not-him again.

Other-me and I look at each other, then back at Cisco saying in sync, “What do you mean?”

“Whoah, a little less ‘ _red rum_ ’ there, simul-speak is creepier than expected.” I don’t know if he’s expecting a laugh, but he sure as hell doesn’t get one. “I was able to use our Oliver and the other Earth’s Felicity to help focus on the ‘you’ over there. With all four of you here, on our Earth, I’ve lost my anchor on what was already a very difficult hold.”

“I’m stuck here?” Other-me searches around with wide, slightly glassy eyes, like a portal is going to open up if she just finds the right spot to look.

Cisco runs a hand over his hair, looking too uncertain for my liking, “…Not permanently?”

Her panic turns angry, tripping over what she says in an effort to get it out faster, “A-are you telling me or asking me? I- I have a family, my- my work, my- my life! You can’t just-!”

I momentarily forget my own worries at the familiarity of hers, my own emergence on this side of Cisco’s portal the solution where even the idea of alternate Earth’s must be foreign to her. A pleading hope to Cisco, “Can you vibe them?”

The edges of her words are rounded, not quite slurred and I wonder what level of painkillers they’ve got her on, “No the hell he can’t!” Even so she flinches hard as her leg shifts.

“I promise, it doesn’t hurt _,” Why is she so adamant he not use our not so limited resource to figure out a solution?_  Shaking her head and crossing her arms cross over herself, the self protective movement clicks with Other-Oliver’s reaction to when I mentioned Cisco’s other ability. “…Oh, right…It’s a poor naming choice, it’s like palm reading…ish. Vibe like wavelength, not…not sexual.”

Cisco shakes his head, “Still be a no go. I’m singed round the edges from fighting to hold that portal open so long, give a guy a second to…”

“ _I DON’T CARE_! I want to go home!” I know that tone of what is and isn’t my voice. That’s my verge of breaking down to tears because there’s nothing I can do. But when I even start to reach for her arm Oliver captures my fingers to keep them away.

I look at his hand, then his face in question. _Nothing disastrous happened the first time, it’s highly unlikely…_ He doesn’t say a word, just shakes his head, lines around his features deepening with a frown.

I lean in, and quietly say, “Oliver, I need a few minutes with you…we need to-“

There is a groan from the floor. “Son of a bitch, sucker punch much?”

_Call your mom a bitch much?_

“You may get away with treating people like that on _your_ Earth, but on this one-“

“Just ask her, I treated her very well.”

_This is not happening_. I pull my husband’s arm to no effect. “Please, come with me for-“

“Guess you’re not crazy. Hey, ‘husband’ go easy on her, she’ll be sore for-”

I can feel the blood drain down to my toes and quickly glancing away when I feel my husband’s searching stare. “Honey, I thought you said you weren’t hurt? Caitlin!”

“Please Oliver, this is not a group discussion…I…” We need to be somewhere without an audience. “Barry, please get me and the two of him somewhere we can have a private conversation?”


End file.
